Portable Cell Cultures to Portable Embryo Incubator to Portable Artificial Womb

A recent story about the grandmother in Brasil who gave birth to her own twin grandchildren suggests that there would be a strong demand for an artificial womb, should such a thing ever be perfected. This grandmother was apparently happy to perform this vital service for her daughter. After all, she was able to walk away from the primary responsibilities of childraising when she left the hospital. But how would the dynamics of the same situation have changed in the context of safe and efficacious artificial wombs?

You may remember the microfluidic chip developed by Teruo Fujii of the University of Tokyo, designed to nourish an embryo in its early stages of development before final transplantation into a human womb. And the recent microfluidic cell culture incubator developed at Johns Hopkins is an impressive development along the same lines.

In a recent edition of the journal IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems, the Johns Hopkins researchers reported that they had successfully used the micro-incubator to culture baby hamster kidney cells over a three-day period. They said their system represents a significant advance over traditional incubation equipment that has been used in biology labs for the past 100 years.

...In contrast, the thumb-size system developed by the Johns Hopkins engineers is self-contained and requires no external heating source. A drop of liquid containing living cells is injected into a port and flows through one of the microfluidic channels. A nutrient solution — the cells’ food – is also added in this manner.

The cells gravitate toward and stick to the surface of the microchip. The chip contains a simple heating unit – a miniature version of the type found in a common toaster – and is equipped with a sensor that continually checks to make sure the proper temperature is maintained. For human cells, this is usually 37 degrees Celsius or 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. The chip is connected to a computer that controls the sensing and heating process. The prototype is connected to a computer via a hard wire, but the inventors say a wireless version would be the next step.

A gas-permeable membrane on the incubator allows the microsystem to exchange carbon dioxide and oxygen but keeps out bacteria that could contaminate the cell culture. If a cell colony grows too large, an enzyme can be injected into one of the microfluidic ports to detach and flush away surplus cells without destroying the primary cell culture.

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Quite clever indeed. From such microfluidic culture devices, it is not such a stretch to imagine a staged device with graduated chambers (or a single expandable chamber) that accepts an IVF embryo at one end, and nine months later delivers a fully developed neonate out the other.

Bioethicists will no doubt agonize over the concept from now until the next millenium, but the fact is there is a demand for such devices. Where there is a demand, human ingenuity will usually created a supply.

A previous Al Fin article discussed two of the most famous would-be developers of artificial wombs, scientists Kuwabara in Tokyo, and Liu at the Center for Reproductive Medicine and Infertility. Other researchers are working in the background, developing the necessary techniques, devices, and software that would allow a single cell to develop into a fully developed neonate in vitro.

One step at a time, largely unnoticed by the public. That is how most science advances.